BYU should be ranked

GolfDiveNCougs wrote:

snoscythe wrote:
Who have we beaten to deserve being ranked? No one.

Same as the large majority of ranked teams.

Agreed. In a weekend when NINE of the top 25 played 1-AA teams, ten if you include recently "promoted" Western Kentucky (and 11 if you include UNLV :P ) there's no reason teams who actually get wins against D-1 schools shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt over teams who aren't even playing schools in their own division.

But good luck with that though. I mean, if the royalty schools don't stay at the top of the polls, how else will they be able to absorb the bad losses and still stay within reach of those big bowl payouts???

My point was this: beginning with the shaky premise that preseason polls have some modicum of accuracy, what has BYU done to deserve moving up past other teams who also won?

People, the fact of the matter is that regardless of how you feel about preseason polls or the competition we faced, you can't ignore the system in place. I don't even think some of ya'll realize that BYU is sitting at #28 in the coaches poll and #34 in the AP poll (if they extended that far). We are already receiving votes. By shear nature of the fact that four teams lost in front of us, we will move up in the polls. It's all about placement in the polls. And week 1 is the one week when the there is the most movement in the polls anyway, obviously because there is no other body of work to base the rankings off of. But given all the questions around BYU during the offseason and the losses from last year and the way teams were pimping UW and Locker to contend for a Pac-10 title and the Heisman this year, it doesn't matter how bad the Huskies may have been because perception was they would beat us handily. Shoot, many if not most on this site even doubted our Cougars and said this game had big potential to be a loss. I'm sure most of that belief was due to the hyping taking place that the doubters fell victim to. The bottom line is the polls aren't an accurate science as we all know and especially early in the year tell us little. But that rarely stops the pollsters from grasping to their preseason predictions. And seeing as how BYU is currently perched just outside the top 25, it is fairly safe to assume we'll be ranked in at least one poll tomorrow, whether it is warranted yet or not. But then again, if BYU doesn't warrant it, who does really? Every year is different, and no two seasons can ever be looked at through the same glass. And most of these polls are bunk from the get go anyway.



Teams who lost in front of BYU in at least one of the two polls (AP/Coaches):

#10/#6 VaTech - won't fall far enough to help BYU

#15/#15 Pitt - looked absolutely awful against the pukes; totally overrated; funny how BCS teams breaking in a new QB get the benefit of the doubt but BYU doesn't

#18/18 UNC - not only lost but won't have 12 of the starters for the foreseeable future

#24/#22 Oregon State - not a bad loss but a loss all the same

#26/#26 Cincy - pretty well handled by Fresno

#31/#33 UConn - beat pretty soundly at Michigan



There were others that didn't look so hot. Maybe the pollsters drop them, maybe they don't.

Screamineagle wrote:
Hope someone brings a little shovel(not in thier carryon) to bring home a piece of that FSU turf.

I like the thought!

Just like I thought. BYU jumped Cincy, UNC, Pitt, and Oregon State in the coaches poll though Arizona jumped as after beating Toledo, who went 5-7 last year, on the road. That puts us at #24. AP hasn't been released yet.



I was also excited to see teams like Florida and OU drop for poor performances at home against traditionally weak teams and LSU not get a bump for barely squeaking by UNC who was missing 12 of their best players.